


Flame

by goseaward



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-09-23
Updated: 2003-09-23
Packaged: 2017-10-31 13:50:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goseaward/pseuds/goseaward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry helps Snape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flame

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Dusk till Dawn, the HP/SS Fuh-Q Fest. The challenge was to write a fic exactly 1,000 words long. As I remember, this was the first fic Isolde betaed for me, beginning a long and fruitful (on her part) partnership. Thanks so much.

He was heat, he was fire, he was so inextricably and utterly and powerfully _there_ that Severus suspected he might be intrinsically luminous, brightening the room by his mere presence. 

Lips and teeth and tongue, so sinful, so young, in an unexpected bloom of sensuality. Severus closed his eyes and the afterimage lingered. Smooth pale shimmering skin, veins a tracery beneath the surface, perfect, perfect, and Severus almost didn't believe he was there, would not have believed it if the other wizard was a less potent presence. As things were, though, he was more solid than anything in Severus's cold chambers, perhaps more real than anything Severus had ever seen. 

He was glorious. 

Severus normally felt cold, but compared to the flame kindled in the other wizard's body, he seemed glacial. Tongues and ribbons of fire twined around his partner's nude form. Shimmers of moonlight and ice ran over Severus's skin, turning its sallow tone into something otherworldly. From where he lay on the bed, he watched his partner permeate the room with his magic, feeling too frigid to move. 

Potter's eyes opened, startlingly green in the warm light from his body. Without his glasses, the boy's eyes were huge, innocent, incongruous with the power that sang along every fibre in his body. "Severus," he whispered. 

"Harry," Severus said. 

"You have to surrender completely," he said in the same soft sibilant voice. 

"I am." 

"No," Potter said, then paused. "You're trying too hard to understand. Just...experience." 

Severus closed his eyes again, sinking into the warm red haven of backlit eyelids. The power in the room increased to a palpable level. He opened his eyes. Potter's skin was golden, literally, a shimmering rich creamy colour completely unlike Snape's pasty yellow. His hair was a devilish, crimson-outlined black, his eyes still brilliantly verdant. Veins of fire were running around Snape's chambers now; he could almost hear the screams as long-frozen stone heated in the sheer magical potential streaming from Potter's body in waves. Like demented roots, the flaming lines twisted over every surface, coming ever closer to the bed. 

"Better, so good, don't stop," Potter crooned, closing his eyes again. 

The conflagration was on the bed now, creeping over Severus's skin. The lines mapped his skin like cracks in the desert, points and curves of heat chasing away twenty years of chill. Severus threw his head back and moaned as the magic reached his mouth and his cock almost simultaneously, entering his body and starting to coat places no one had ever thought to touch in him. It was bliss, and it was pain, and it was everything he could think of or want in the world in this instant, with Potter a fallen angel of crimson and gold and sparkling wings, and himself the cold blue ice just melting back to life. 

Potter was chanting something now, something full of hissing and strange vowels—Parseltongue, Severus realized. The lines squirmed, transmuting into thousands of tiny fiery snakes, crawling over the surface of everything in the room. The light was now a strange approximation of light reflected off water. Potter's hissing increased, and the lines moved more quickly. Severus could feel some of them circling his ears, entering, and then he could understand the words: _crawl for me, grow for me, obey me, you are mine..._

The angelic image was more than an metaphor, now. As Potter absorbed some of Severus's...energy, his magic, cold blue wings grew from his sculpted shoulderblades. A marble angel, golden, veined in his own red and Severus's blue. Huge and icy, the pinions sprang upwards, outwards, with a semblance of feathers and a feeling of flight. _Yes, yes, we are creatures of the Earth, but we can fly, we are made to fly, we are not to be tied down._

"Seraph," Severus whispered. 

_We are angels, we are angels, we are all of us angels,_ Potter hissed. 

"I love you," he said. 

_We are magnificent. We are beautiful. You cannot touch us. You cannot tie him down._

The individual threads were spinning, now, small squiggles of light rotating everywhere, throwing Severus's balance into question as he fisted his hands in the sheets. 

_You cannot keep him, you cannot take part of him away. You cannot touch him. You are gone._

The fires flared, so brightly that Severus could no longer look; Potter was a towering image against his eyelids, winged, flame-wreathed, beautiful, so beautiful. Then, suddenly, everything was dark. Even the heat the magic had wrought inside him was gone, sucked back into his partner. After a pause of a few seconds, the torches set into Severus's walls lit themselves, and there was only one skinny pale nude boy with messy hair and an annoying scar, standing exactly in the middle of Severus's only rug. 

"You love me?" he said with a grin. 

"It was the moment, Potter," Severus replied. 

"Sure it was." Potter moved, and Severus noted that he was quite hard. Both of them were, for that matter. The annoying brat flopped onto the bed next to Severus, unabashed at his arousal. "What are seraphs, anyway?" 

"Angels. With four heads and six wings." 

"I only have two," Harry said, grabbing Severus's left arm and rubbing smooth fingers over the unmarked skin. 

"Right. Well. They're the highest order of angels, and obviously you understood that, because you started talking about angels afterwards." 

"Did I? I don't remember." Harry shrugged. "I was mostly taking my cues from you; my power, your mind, probably the best partnership we could make." He gave a pointed look at Severus's groin. "Want me to take care of that for you?" 

"It's your fault, after all. Your magic." 

"I'm eighteen. What else is on my mind?" 

"Obviously, not a great deal." 

Potter kissed him unexpectedly, tender, warm, gorgeous, before moving on to more urgent pursuits. But it was the tingle in his lips that Severus remembered long after, when he thought of the night that Harry gave him his freedom. 


End file.
